Ralph_S said:

I don't think that being 'green' has anything to do with this. I have a thing for building politically incorrect pickup trucks, even if I wouldn't want to be found dead in one and can't understand any practical reasons for having them if you're not a farmer or building contractor. So, what I build with LEGO and what I would prefer in real life are separate issues. LEGO building racecars and big trucks is not a statement about the environment.

As for LEGO cars, I too think that many of the vehicles in the Speed Racers and Agents line are much too big for minifigs, as was the Scuderia Ferrari truck. It's obvious why this is. In order to make the speed racers and the Ferrari truck look sufficiently like the vehicles in the movie /in real life and in order to fit minifigs inside, they simply have to be big. A second reason is playability. From the pictures that I've seen of the Agents truck, there's some sort of laboratory inside. If you want to be able to play with minifgures inside that, it'll have to be big.

Cheers,

Ralph

Agreed. My personal daily driven vehicle is a Toyota FJ Cruiser. Its a 4 wheel drive mid size SUV. I bought it cause i needed a vehicle to haul tools and equipment, as well as tow my shop trailer. I love it to death. Best vehicle i've ever owned. It also gets the worse gas mileage out of any vehicle i've ever owned. (It averages 16MPG). This is my reality and Lego is my ecape from reality. So the last thing i want is lego to start "Following the rules" and down size its vehicles to be "enviormentlly correct". The bigger the better.

The Scuderia ferrari truck while might be a bit big, is still in my opinion one of the best sets lego has ever come out with. Defenetly the best in the Ferrari line. The detail is fantastic, and is practically identical to the real thing. This would have been very hard to do without making it the size it is. For me 4 wide is fine for cars, but trucks need to be 6 wide, and big rigs need to be 8 wide. While i can appreaciate classic lego, i prefer my vehicles to be more to scale. For me, they also make the vehicles more enjoyable to play with. (yes, i'm 26 and i still play with my lego!!! )

  TheBrickster said:

In any case, even 6-stud vehicles are a little large, but they at least can be used with existing cities. As for Speed Racer, the new Agent vehicles, and all the other "big boys", TOO BIG! I think lego could benefit from a more classic concept when it comes to their autos and "

".

In my opinion, Speed Racer NEEDS to be 8 stud wide. While they might be to big to fit in most peoples town, they need to be this big to get the detail of the cars there based on. There not going to fit in a standard to town because they just simply were not designed to.

As for the agents, although there not based on anything in paticular, their still there own seperate theme and shouldn't be limited to the size of current town vehicles. Even at 8 wide, they still look good next to mini figs due to there details.

  Badsneaker said:

I think this Octan fuel driver may beg to differ. He prefers the feel of an 8 wide truck, with a 6 wide cab section.

Please don't disagree with him, after all, he's delivering the fuel you all need to keep your LEGO cars and trucks rolling.

My Tabeltown use to have this friendly fuel delivery truck on its roads - and it didn't take as long to fill 'er up :

  5150 Lego said:

In my opinion, Speed Racer NEEDS to be 8 stud wide. While they might be to big to fit in most peoples town, they need to be this big to get the detail of the cars there based on. There not going to fit in a standard to town because they just simply were not designed to.

Do you think that it would be impossible to create a Speed Racer vehicle with a car that's 4-6 studs wide? Sure, it might not have the same level of detail as the big boys, but I think it would be interesting to see one. I think we've just come to expect larger vehicles if they're detailed. Why couldn't they be designed to fit a standard town?

  TheBrickster said:

Ah, so that's where those lovely grey shutters came from.

Steve

The batmobile is big.It has gadgets on it.Oh, and its Batmans.

Speedracer cars are big, but they have been built to scale,

and the agents cars are only big so they can fit gadgets/playability/coolness.

NORMAL cars are the same.

  Quote

I think it is ironic that they cancelled the Shell line due to global warming but now my minifigs commute in one seater SUVs.

Is that why they didn't make any more? I thought it was just a temporary licensing contract they had that eventually ran out.

  Quote

I think this Octan fuel driver may beg to differ. He prefers the feel of an 8 wide truck, with a 6 wide cab section.

Please don't disagree with him, after all, he's delivering the fuel you all need to keep your LEGO cars and trucks rolling.

Cool model. That actually looks like an armored military truck.

  Quote

Me too. Perhaps it's our age group or the classic Lego in us.

And even though they were only 4-studs wide, the detail was excellent. I don't own either of the sets pictured below, but just check out the quality of the simple design:

I grew up during the same period but I always used to make various modifications to the basic cars to make them look bigger and more detailed. I remember getting the 6335 Indy Transport set some years later and thinking of how much cooler the cars had gotten over time.

Those trailers are quite nice actually. It's the basic cars and pickups that I never really liked.

No 6-wide cars and trucks in my town! The reason: continuity. I don't like a mix of 4 and 6-wide cars/trucks in my town. I'd only make exceptions for wonderful sets which simply contain a 6-wide vehicle. But I wouldn't buy a 6-wide vehicle separately. And I don't like those really big racing cars at all. They're just too big for the minifigs.

And there's one big advantage about sticking with 4-wide vehicles: no problems with garages, road plates, whatsoever.

Edited May 9, 200816 yr by legotrainfan

People actually put fuel in their lego cars?

  Captain green hair said:

People actually put fuel in their lego cars?

I'm with Greenie!

What's the fuss about?

Do mind Lexus has made an Hybrid SUV

Think big!

  CP5670 said:

Is that why they didn't make any more? I thought it was just a temporary licensing contract they had that eventually ran out.

Yeah, it said that some place on their Website. I'll go look...

Meh, I can't find it, sorry. I know they said it in some fancy way so as to not step on the toes of environmentalists or nay-sayers though.

  Captain green hair said:

People actually put fuel in their lego cars?

Fortunately, I was too young to care about it when I last built my old service station...

I may try to rebuild it now, though, and to upgrade it to current standars . Without actual fuel, in any case.

LuxorV

  TheBrickster said:

My Tabeltown use to have this friendly fuel delivery truck on its roads - and it didn't take as long to fill 'er up :

Thats a nice little fuel truck. To bad you can't fit a mini fig though. I'd love to see a modern 8 wide version!!

  TheBrickster said:

Do you think that it would be impossible to create a Speed Racer vehicle with a car that's 4-6 studs wide? Sure, it might not have the same level of detail as the big boys, but I think it would be interesting to see one. I think we've just come to expect larger vehicles if they're detailed. Why couldn't they be designed to fit a standard town?

Never said it would be impossible, but just like your saying, the level of detail just wouldn't be there in a 4 wide version. With a licence like Speed Racer, detail shouldn't be sacraficed just so you can fit it in a town.

lolz

  5150 Lego said:

With a licence like Speed Racer, detail shouldn't be sacraficed just so you can fit it in a town.

I don't know about that. One of the things that I appreciated about Classic City was that one could continue to add additional components, and they were along the same size. For instance, if someone wanted a race track/road for Speed Racer, what would they do? And how about some buildings/garages to house vehicles this large?

I'm not saying one would necessarily loose detail/quality with a smaller vehicle, it just wouldn't be the same. Sometimes a very small model can be much more detailed than a larger one. We've seen it done with a number of official sets. Just look at the details of the 4-stud vehicles pictured in some of the images above. They're terrific!

Perhaps Lego built the Speed Racer vehicles for a more expensive price point.

  TheBrickster said:

I don't know about that. One of the things that I appreciated about Classic City was that one could continue to add additional components, and they were along the same size. For instance, if someone wanted a race track/road for Speed Racer, what would they do? And how about some buildings/garages to house vehicles this large?

I'm not saying one would necessarily loose detail/quality with a smaller vehicle, it just wouldn't be the same. Sometimes a very small model can be much more detailed than a larger one. We've seen it done with a number of official sets. Just look at the details of the 4-stud vehicles pictured in some of the images above. They're terrific!

Perhaps Lego built the Speed Racer vehicles for a more expensive price point.

I agree that it would be nice if they did keep to more-or-less the same scale, but it just doesn't work for something like this.

The four-wide cars were very nice, but they were also rather boxy, and that's hard to avoid if you want to fit a figure in it. There are a lot of very nice highly detailed cars that are four or five studs wide on brickshelf, but most of those can't fit figures. It's just not possible to get the proportions more or less right and still fit a figure inside on anything other than a Landrover.

I tried to build a few more curvy cars myself a while ago, that would still fit minifigs.

A Ferrari, inspired by a 348TB

An English cab.

I made them five studs wide and I don't think I could have done it smaller. Despite that, the Ferrari is still very boxy. I'm quite happy with the cab, although to fit a minifig passenger, you have to remove the passenger's hair/ headgear. Trouble is, they're complicated and fragile (especially the cab). For a set that is to be sold to a seven-year-old, that wouldn't be acceptable. Sets have to be sturdy and relatively simple. Combining that with a concerted effort to make the cars look like the ones from the movie pushes the size of the model up. That is inevitable IMO.

Perhaps here's an idea for a contest : build one of the speedracers up to five studs wide that can still fit a figure.

Cheers,

Ralph

  TheBrickster said:

I don't know about that. One of the things that I appreciated about Classic City was that one could continue to add additional components, and they were along the same size. For instance, if someone wanted a race track/road for Speed Racer, what would they do? And how about some buildings/garages to house vehicles this large?

While i understand where your coming from, one important factor that you need to remember is that this is NOT classic city. Correct me if i'm wrong, but lego didn't have any licenced theme's back then, so it was probbly in there best interest to make sub themes as compatable as they could. As far as race tracks and garages go, i'm assuming that your talking about the size of the road plates vs. speed racers cars. Me personally, have never let that hold me back. with any theme's. And this is lego. You can build a building/garage as big as you want! This was even proven with the Ferrari pit garages!

  TheBrickster said:

I'm not saying one would necessarily loose detail/quality with a smaller vehicle, it just wouldn't be the same. Sometimes a very small model can be much more detailed than a larger one. We've seen it done with a number of official sets. Just look at the details of the 4-stud vehicles pictured in some of the images above. They're terrific!

There nice no doubt, but a larger version would without a doubt carry more detail. Maybe for the second wave of speed racer they might do some smaller versions to please the 4 stud wide crowd, but for the first wave, it was very important that the sets had as much detail as possible.

  TheBrickster said:

Perhaps Lego built the Speed Racer vehicles for a more expensive price point.

Unfortunatly, I think this is partially true. Think of it from producers/owners of lego and the speed racer licenece. Lets say that Lego had some models for you to choose from to be the first wave of legos speed racer line of toys. There are many aspects that you need to think about when selling a licenced theme like this.

( Detail, price, size of the set/vehicle, staying true to the license etc.) Lets say they put a 4 wide, and the current 8 wide versions of the cars in front of you. From a marketing stand point, whitch would you choose? I know its hard since we don't have any 4 wide's to compare to, but from a marketing stand point, it makes sence to go with the more detailed and more "reconizable" set. Yes, the more parts equal a higher cost, but in this case, i think it will be money well spent. Again, we don't have any 4 wide's to compare to so i guess you really couldn't say for sure if this is is true, but in past sets, this has been the case. lets look at ferrari for example.

The F1 cars built for mini figs in my opinion are perfect scale. Any thing smaller would have taken away from the detail, and made the sets less enjoyable and quite frankly, would have looked half megablocks if they did. I'm not say that lego doesn't take things like that into consideration, but in cases like this, detail and scale SHOULD win every time over being able to fit in a classic town layout. Now this year lego did introduce there "Mini line" of sets, but these can't hold mini figs.

Basicly what i'm getting at is certain theme's shouldn't be confined to the age old 4 vs. 6 vs. 8 wide debate. Themes like Speed Racer, Ferrari, Indie and Agents should be built to a scale that best shows there detail. If they can do that by going 4 or 6 wide, then great, but they shouldn't be limited either.

You make some good points 5150L. While I don't agree with you in regard to the size and detail of the Speed Racer sets, I do think Lego did a really nice job with the detail of the Indy sets, even if they are a bit large. In fact, I love the vehicles from Race for the Stolen Treasure. I'm not stuck on 4-stud vehicles as they are sometimes boxy. I just think that Lego could make a detailed vehicle without making them so large.

--------

Oh, and Ralph- great MOCs you've got there! Thaks for sharing. I really like the English cab.

With all the talk of 4 wide oldies - I forgot to mention. There are some horridly large scale trucks with minifig-scale capabilities too. Take a look at one of my very first sets even!

8 wide huge tired tall trucks, in 1990? Oh yes.

  Brickmaster said:

There are some horridly large scale trucks with minifig-scale capabilities too.

Wow! I don't remember ever seeing these. I thought the large mini-fig scale vehicles were a present day style (or at least just the past few years). It looks like Lego introduced them a long time ago.

I did pick this set up after seeing it at LegoLand with the Air Chase Plane. I thought it was really neat at the time.

  Quote

With all the talk of 4 wide oldies - I forgot to mention. There are some horridly large scale trucks with minifig-scale capabilities too. Take a look at one of my very first sets even!

Yeah, the 7xx Basic line had some very nice sets but the scales were often out of whack. I have the 735 set and the fire engine is comparable to many Model Team sets in size and detail, but it actually has minifig-size seats and doors.

These sets don't actually come with any minifigs though and are probably not intended for them.

Edited May 11, 200816 yr by CP5670

  CP5670 said:

Yeah, the 7xx Basic line had some very nice sets but the scales were often out of whack. I have the 735 set and the fire engine is comparable to many Model Team sets in size and detail, but it actually has minifig-size seats and doors.

These sets don't actually come with any minifigs though and are probably not intended for them.

That fire engine was a great set -one of those that I always wanted but never quite got around to buying. Most early model team trucks were 12 studs wide, so the fire engine was more-or-less stuck between model team and city. I too use minfig doors and seats in models that are too big for minifigs.

Anyway, the point is valid: LEGO used to do detailed 8-wide trucks long before they started introducing them in the city line -even if they didn't come with minifigs.

Cheers,

Ralph

Cool Topic

There are way too many sizes of LEGO cars/vehicles produced that are out of scale and don't fit in with each other. We have the past 80s style cars that are ridiculously small but cute looking. Then there are the various 90s style vehicles that came in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

The 2000s didn't bring much relief either until recently with the 07 city sets.

Those vehicles all seemed to fit in perfectly with each other. The Garbage Truck was one of my favorites, it looked detailed and was very scale close to minifigs.

Then there are 08 with Speed Racer and Agents. I personally like the Speed Racer cars and sets because they are "race cars" like the F1 racers that larger too. However they most likely take up two lanes of the road baseplate and look weird next to the 07 city vehicles.

As for the fuel economy and gas usage and global warming, very simple explanation, the Speed Racer and Agent cars run on hydrogen or electric

Thats why we see less of the older 80s LEGO cars, they are polluters!

Larger Cars On!